1.24.2010

In the Radicant, Bourriaud quoted Duchamp mentioning that it was all because of his separation from France while living in the United State with a clean slate that enabled him to move beyond his root and create something totally new. The term exote is perhaps the one term that I can relate to most. In the past few years I've been more involve in instigating my Chines cultural roots and relating it to new cultural learning in my daily life. The bombardment of all these new ideas actually help me to constantly re-evaluate my very base root in relation to the new ideas.

Thinking in terms of the plant analogy, the ivy crawl and grows to diverse place, and from that it get a lot more surface area to carry on photosynthesis to feed back and make the root grow larger.

There's a lot for me to learn from Laurie Anderson's approach to her art. The special thing in her work , from performance pieces down to her exhibition works, is that they all reaches out and try to build a connection with all it's viewers.

Some of her fixed media work like the Talking Pillow (1977/1985) Small Handphone Table(1978) Telephone Tag have the quality of actively engage the audience with simplistic setup and audio loops.

In relation to my project, I ought to explore how a simple Audio Video piece could draw the audience attention and bring them into a particular state of mind. One way to approach it is through the detail considerations of what particular sound or image will be involve. I do want to keep my material very concise and in order to use maximize the effect of the sound, I ought to think about ways sound and visual connect with each other and how the combination will encourage one to imagine and yield more than a mere visual aural experience for the audience.

1.23.2010

Upon viewing the Buckminster Fuller documentary, the biggest question I have is how much does the capitalist society hinder the success of his patented Dynamaxion ideas.

The idea of extracting maximum potential out of a minimum material is a fantastic idea, however it seems really contradictory to the working of a capitalist environment. Bucky's design essentially aims for cost effectiveness, and long term sustainability, it poses a stark contrast against the capitalist world that I experience, where all it is, is just a "do whatever need be to give oneself most benefit" cut throat cage battle. Most society suffers greatly under the system the fat man get fatter while all the other starve to death.

I imagine that Bucky's idea might work great in aids to Third World Countries. Third world support group ought to look into Bucky's design and explore weather those will ideas could be applicable.

Bucky's geodesic dome was once displayed in the 1965 World Expo, hopeful that his ideas could bring betterment among human being. I think the 20th Century failed on applying his idea, but we as 21st Century citizens should be more conscious about conserving out one and only Spaceship Earth.

1.21.2010

Missed last week's pitch'in session, so here's to share some ideas I had in my mind...

Lets start the ditch'in ...

PITCH #1[DITCHED]

Sound for Video

Last Term I collected some footage from my performance piece, basically it was a 20 minute daily thing that lasted for 7 days. I thought it might be good to edit these footage down and to and play with the video sound source to the edited version.

OR

Video on Sound

I am currently working on a brass quintet and tape piece that will be put forward to my senior recital next term. I used the 2/3 versus 1/3 relationships (1.5 which is extremely close to the golden mean 1.618.....) to generate the Marco and Micro structure for the piece. I thought it will be great to create a video that will accompany the music, visually act as a real time representation of the musical events that occur in the piece.

PITCH #2[DITCHED for this class.... BUT end of year Art Minor show?]

Over the Summer, I spent my time working in the WLFM (LU RADIO STATION!)A big part of my job is to "process" these unwanted promotional material. As in, taking apart the whole package, recycle the paper and jewel case and cd separately.

A sum of around maybe 2000 cds were "destroyed/abandoned" under my hand.

So much art and music are being created every single day. People put much efforts into it, yet these music under the commercial world are so disposable. Our radio station is probably a microcosm of the real world music industry, so much are being sent in and with the lack of time to review these materials, majority of these material are being judge by the promo write ups or even the album covers, these Cd might get played by us for maybe 1 minute or so, and most of them go to the reject bin.

Anyway, I kept all the disc and had an idea of creating aspace with sound installation that is accompanied by sculptures that incorporate these Cds.

Sort of a little honoring ceremony acknowledging all these artist, it really takes courage to believe in your art and putting yourself out there.

PITCH #3[G is for Green is for Go]

I've been toying with the programming software now called Max5 for about 3 years now, and the most work I've done with it involves mainly with the audio capability of the software in situations like sound designing and improvising.

Last term, I worked a bit more on designing my own audio effects, as a reaction to the commercialized software available in the market.The flexibility of Max5 allows me to think outside the parameters set by these commercial products and get into programming the specific kind of effects that is tailored to achieve the sound world that I have imagined in my head.

Max5 also contain equally powerful visual capabilities, and that is an unexplored domain for me. Its time for me to really look into it.

My observation is that there is a surge of electronic musicians in recent years, who handles both audio and visuals in their performance to give another layer of sensual experience for their audiences.The integration of visual into music seems to become more popular too, VJs (Video-Jockey) seems to be as important as the DJs.

In short, my personal goals for this class is to explore the capabilities of the software and learn to incorporate the technology in to art making.

The product will be an improvisation with live (hopefully interactive!) video feed.

PITCH #4 Back up plan.

If all else fail, i will fulfill my final project requirement under the name of: "Ongsitco Chan and his Failures"

I think its gonna be a mix of HipHop, and Trash.

Liam will be the beat boxer.

Jordan will be in charge of some heavy guitar riffage à la Metallica's early career.

I guess i will be the awkward kid in the group from the east, whoring my cultural identity out to make something that meets the popular taste of the WEST.

1.10.2010

It is truly inspiring to see the determination of Les Paul in realizing the sound he imagined in his head. The documentary Les Paul: Chasing Sound! showcased few of Les' discovery and how he artfully incorporated technology into his music making.

Les Paul's case serves as a good example of the advantage of the Artist who knows the working of the technologies to complement their work. The rapid technological development in the past few decades brought out incredible amount of people who really excel in the technological aspect of things, be it coding, software operation, hardware assemblage etc.

Nowadays knowledge of technology and art is really an essential requirement for working artists or technicians. A freelance musician really benefits from using technology in their advantage to promote and record materials. And in the case of the technician, having a sense of aesthetic help their work tremendously in say website coding and designing.

Les Paul's work really reminded me of Leonardo DaVinci, the archetype of a Renaissance man. The integration of art and technology will yield more people in the likes of Les Paul and DaVinci into our world in the future.

1.07.2010

In You See Me Laughin - The Last of the Hill Country the scene that got me thinking most is the part where the film shows Matthew Johnson the label head and Tom Rothrock the famed producer of artist like Beck, Elliot Smith and James Blunt working on a remix of R. L. Burnside song.

At first I thought that this concept initiated by Johnson is an obviously move to commodify R.L.'s music in order to reach a wider audience base. An act that I think contradict with his label's statement of preserving and documenting the Hill Country Blues tradition properly. Initially I thought the remixing project is disrespectful to the original creations of the artists, and I feel like they exploited the carefree attitude of these artists towards their image to the outside world.

Adding Dub bass lines, compressing the drums to get that up to date Hip Hop drum sound...these additions might not compile well with our ideas of what traditional Delta Blues should sound. However, if we think about the beginning scene of the documentary, where it shows Junior Kimbrough's JukeJoint, people having a good time dancing to the music, we can see that all these Blues artist really wanted afterall, might just be simple as making music for people to dance to, something they can do to take other people's blues away. In this vein, Rothrock and Johnson's vision really do nothing more but supplement the meaning of the artist's music.

In conclusion, I learned to respect the creative efforts during the mixing. In fact I realize that there is no use to simply record these music as is, and preserve them like we do for fossil stones in museums. Music should be alive, and if these producers decide to jump outside the box a little bit and did it with integrity, it is definitely worth me listening to.